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FrankPoole writes "Indie iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing social games giant Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower. Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got word out about the similarities between Dream Heights and Tiny Tower with an image that's still making the Twitter rounds. The image is made up of screenshots showing how Dream Heights' interface and gameplay mechanics appear strikingly similar to Tiny Tower's."

Yeah but it is kinda sad a guy can bust his ass making something unique only to have some scumbum company like Zynga bold face copy the thing. it looks like they only gave it a little graphical polish and called it a day, pretty obvious ripoff IMHO. hopefully the guy can get a good lawyer that will rip Zynga a new one.

Yeah but it is kinda sad a guy can bust his ass making something unique only to have some scumbum company like Zynga bold face copy the thing.

Likewise it's kinda sad that Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie can bust their asses making something unique only to have some scumbum company like FSF bold face copy the thing. Or are you trying to say cloning the functionality of a computer program is OK as long as the publisher of the clone is one of Slashdot's darling companies?

Uhhh...are you stoned? Seriously...are you? Linux was an x86 version of MINIX not unix, they used some of the POSIX conventions but that's all, as SCO found out. And having similar functionality is NOT the same as copying all the levels of a program and just sticking a new picture on it, a better example would be me just copypasta-ing all the levels in BioShock and calling it BioSmack. This isn't "similar" its a level for level, page for page, feature for feature bold faced ripoff. And you CAN shut down blo

Why aren't the POSIX conventions copyrightable? Because they're a method of operation.

or MSFT shutting down Lindows

For one thing, that's trademark. For another, you appear to have got that one backward: Microsoft ended up settling out of court and paying Lindows Inc. for the right to the "Lindows" trademark because Microsoft risked a ruling that "windows" was too generic.

It's a shame, yet what's the alternative? Software patents or something similar that'd cover look and feel, or even game concerts. To go down that route would be like allowing authors to have a monopoly on the murder mystery in which the the ostensibly bumbling detective unmasks the criminal through a gradual process incessant badgering and questioning. Sure, if code or other copyrightable assets are being swiped, then yes, get the lawyers in. Other than that I see more problems created than would be solved

pretty much. I was working for the game dopewars, which was bought out by zynga and reskinned as mafia wars and other clones, pushed to the side, i never even got paid for any of my work (granted i was admin/maintenance not programming but it was for a good 2 years)

long story short, zynga is a parasite, its a bad company that does shady business practices and we can only hope it will be gone in the not so distant future

Actually Apple did steal a lot of their ideas for the Mac from the Xerox Parc

"No, Steve, I think its more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I'd been there first, and you said. "Hey that's no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set! - Bill Gates' response after Steve Jobs accused Microsoft of borrowing the GUI (Graphical User Interface) from Apple for Windows 1.0* "

The claim that the south fought the civil war over slavery is not made because President Lincoln viewed the war that way. It was because in almost every southern secession speech "preserving the institution of slavery" was given as a main reason for secession.

People only claim that Steve Jobs stole technology because he said so himself [youtube.com]

I'd like to see that complete interview. There's another clip from the same interview where he talks about Xerox Parc. There's also a clip from the interview where he has a go at Microsoft for having no taste, and saying that Apple got the idea for proper typography on the Mac from looking at beautiful books.

I have a feeling this clip refers to the latter rather than the former. But without the whole interview it's impossible to tell.

Do you ask the CEO of Ford whether that Toyota car you are thinking about getting is any good?

Actually, I would. I would probably already know the answer, and the honesty in the answer from the guy from Ford might make me consider his products as an alternative.

Sadly, I have never gotten a straight answer like that from the actual salespeople who work for Ford... when I was buying a new car last February, I was treated like a piece of meat by the Ford folks. I had really one requirement in my car: full time all-wheel drive. A manual transmission was wanted, but wasn't a deal-breaker. I live in a nor

My Rav4 doesn't have a button to disable traction control, and it's resulted in me being stuck one or two times in snow over the last few years. The tires will just refuse to spin with it enabled. You can disable it, but the procedure is ridiculous:

How odd. In my 2011 Subaru Impreza, it literally is a button. It's down and to the left of the steering wheel, near where the hood release is (but several inches from it, and a completely different action to activate it). You press the button, an idiot light lights up on the console indicating that TC is disabled, and it remains disabled until either you press the button again, or you turn the car off.

Your instructions are for a 2007 Rav4. Do you know if the later models have that same limitation? That's an

I think that people use the word "stole" because of the way that Apple fanboys pretend that Apple invented everything great about computing, when in fact they've mostly taken everything from someone else (nothing wrong with that) and made it crappy and hard to use. That they've managed to sell that crap to millions of idiots with poor aesthetic sensibilities is irrelevant.

Well, that's how Microsoft "steals" their ideas, according to the Slashdot Group-Think... Microsoft stole this, Microsoft stole that... Actually they *buy* a lot of their ideas, but that doesn't stop the accusations of theft here...

Nimblebit just got a tonne of marketing over this - who cares about the ripoff? marketing 101 => success!

Yes, but Zynga just gave it to them. People listen because it is a good story (David vs Goliath). Since the games are practically the same, users have a choice. And most are likely to go with the one by the people who (understandably) feel cheated. In essence, Zynga brought this upon themselves. All they could have hoped for would have been Nimblebit A) saying nothing or B) being complete dicks about it.

I am not saying Zynga is going to be losing any sleep over this, but they did hand over free marketi

X stories down we just had "Your photo infringes on his photo because it contained similar design elements". Now we have "Zynga accused of infringing on Nimblebit's version because it contains similar design bits"? Yet our reactions are *different*?

Why aren't that first photographer happy that the second one "handed over free marketing"?

I think we just stumbled on a new flaw in copyright besides the other famous ones: That there are *different classes* of works, but only one copyight law! So we have the same law handling Red Buses In Photos and Nimblebit Games and Twilight Movies. So the judges are handing down rulings that almost make sense for one class of works, and lead to frightening results in the other classes, with lawyers eating it all for dinner.

Methods of operation are explicitly not copyrightable in my country (17 USC 102(b)). I'd assume that game play mechanics are methods of the game's operation. Nor are any graphical elements that necessarily follow from the method of operation, per the merger doctrine [wikipedia.org].

ex staffer says [gameinformer.com] "zynga's motto is 'do evil'". also "the source said that staffers were, and are still, instructed to blatantly steal the idea of competitors. He recalls a time when founder Mark Pincus spoke on the subject, allegedly saying “I don’t f**king want innovation. You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.” "

I was riding Caltrain the week that the whole "we're clawing back your RSUs or you're fired" thing went down, and met some Zynga employees. The good news is that it didn't damage morale too much; the bad news is that it's because said employees had a rather mercenary holding-out-for-the-big-bucks attitude of "as long as it doesn't happen to me". Sounds like they were a perfect fit.

No, they should have, because they did morally copy it and then gave it away for all of us to share and benefit. This is not what Zynga is doing. Zynga does not care about the community and society, they only care about their own coffers.

Whose morals? My morals happen to include "it's wrong to infringe copyright by illegally downloading music/software". I'm clearly outnumbered here on Slashdot by people who, even if they agree it's technically wrong, nevertheless believe it's morally justified because of the evilness of the MPAA/RIAA.

I don't bring this up to get into an argument about copyright and piracy, but to point out that adhering to "moral rules" first requires you define whose moral rules you are using as your measure.

I'm with you that ideas should be free, I do wonder what would happen if Nimblebit started copying Zynga games from now on though. I suspect we might see some hypocrisy in Zynga's response, but I'd be happy for Zynga to prove me wrong and put out a statement that this is fine in their opinion.

Which would likely be quashed by Lotus v. Borland among other case law. Game rules and other methods of operation aren't copyrightable (17 USC 102(b)), and any aspect of look and feel that follows directly from an uncopyrightable idea is likewise not copyrightable.

Making similar games is perfectly fine. If the basic idea is good, why not have multiple games implement it? Nobody is claiming that every single shooter is a Doom ripoff or that every single strategy game is a Dune ripoff.Ideas have to be free so they can be used by everyone for everyones benefit.

This may be a good time to use the low-tech equivalent to check the validity of the arguments. I don't know anything about the two apps in question, but ask yourself this: at what point would a variant of the board game Monopoly be different enough to ensure Parker Brothers couldn't sue you? Would be keeping the same rules, same basic board layout, and same "props" (player tokens, money, property cards, dice, and two decks of event cards) while changing the color, name, and art style of those keep you from being sues? For example, could I make the tokens space ships, the properties different star systems, the money "space credits" that use plastic coins instead of paper bills, and use public domain images of the star systems and call is "Stellar Baron" and not get sued?

Now back to the user interface. If this was the user interface of an operating system, would the original OS UI maker have a court case? What if it was a general application interface? What about making a knock-off of Farmville in the same manner... or replicating its mechanics with a new graphical interface and naming convention - would the developer of the game get sued, and would it be successful?

Finally, if there is a lawyer in the house, what court cases have set precedent in these areas? Honestly, I do not know the answer to these as law is not my field of study. However, I do know I need to know the history of how courts have ruled before I can say whether this is a legal violation or not. (My personal bias: I believe large companies have successfully sued, while small independent game developers of boardgames often have not - but this is based only on a one week investigation into the board game developer career.)

FarmTown was a more social game. To get people to work on your farm you had to actually go to a communal chat room and ask people for help, not just post "Please send fertilizer" messages on their facebook wall.

drumscowski admits within that he hasn't even played tiny tower - if he had he'd realise it's not a vague 'influence' that nimblebit is pissed off about - such as he took from similar games - it's essentially a direct clone with a new skin on top of it.

Don't make a judgment until you have actually played all the games. I haven't, but at least from what one can read on the Internet from people who have: SimTown plays quite different, TinyTower and Zyngas game almost identical and it's not like this is the first time Zynga has done something like this, see FarmTown vs FarmVille.

OK it does look like they cloned the game but you can't copyright the ideas behind a game only the artwork and the like. Though there are people who would like to extend copyright in this way and are to a certain extant succeeding.

See the thread a few hours ago on Similar, but not copied, image found to breach copyright.

OK it does look like they cloned the game but you can't copyright the ideas behind a game only the artwork and the like. Though there are people who would like to extend copyright in this way and are to a certain extant succeeding.

See the thread a few hours ago on Similar, but not copied, image found to breach copyright.

I don't even think it's immoral. And the comparison image by Nimblebit isn't accusing them of being immoral either, it's accusing the of being unimaginative, which is hard to argue against.

All in all, it's not something to be outraged about, and it was a very good response from Nimblebit. "You have 2700 employees and can't come up with a better idea than what our 3 guys came up with. This is why we rock, and we're looking forward to continue to be ahead of you creating new ideas that will inspire your ne

I found TinyTower whilst looking for something similar to SimTower for my iPhone.
It's quite obvious that TinyTower is inspired by SimTower, however it's not really all that much like what SimTower was.
Zynga's version however is a direct copy of everything from TinyTower.

I've played both SimTower and Tiny Tower. They can only be described as a "remix" if you go to a high enough level that all you can see is that both games have commercial tower construction involved.

In Tiny Tower, you manage all of the people in the building, as well as what each floor is doing - what the stores stock, who works where, who lives where, etc.

In SimTower, you just put in the "zoned" space, and people move in and pay you rent. You manage the building from a facilities perspective, screwing about with elevator timings and where the box stays in the shaft when no one's in it. You manage traffic flow within your building so you don't end up with pissed off people that just want to get out of your building at the end of the day.

They are quite different games. In fact, after finding Tiny Tower, it inspired me to fire up DOSBox with Windows 3.1 and play some SimTower.

Tiny Tower is in the class of games which I personally think of as "real-time impatience machines". There are a couple of iffy mechanics at work, but the most insidious is the dual-currency model. One currency (coins) you get by playing normally. The other (Towerbucks), which makes useful things happen faster, you only get occasionally or at random, but they can be bought with real money. So the point of the game is essentially to addict you and then make you impatient enough to spend real money.

Sorry but "that" screenshot just destroys their case for them. The Zynga version has more options, extremely different options, totally different graphics, different UI, everything.

I don't think they have a case here, and it's NOT like their game was new and building a genre of its own (I hereby give you SimTower / Yoot Tower, which lets you upgrade elevators and put shops on the floors too - from fecking 1994).

You expect me to get all riled about Zygna ripping off your game, but actually I'm more riled th

I remember simtower and the condo bug. If you pause a game, find an unsold condo, drop the price as low as you can, raise it back up again and unpause, it'll immediatly sell for full price. A way to cheat your way out of the dreaded Condo Price Crash.

I remember something similar for championship manager. Another team would approach you to buy your player at some low price you have set. You clicked "I will consider it", then went onto the players options and set their sell price to 50 million. A few minutes later they would ask again to buy even at the inflated price. Fun times.

What different options? I've played Tiny Tower, and looking at the Dream Heights screenshots is like looking at Tiny Tower with different graphics. All the gameplay elements are 100% identical. I see absolutely nothing whatsoever in Dream Heights that isn't in Tiny Tower.

Just a few stories below is the story about a judge claiming that a similar composition is copyright infringement, while clearly insane, how would this ruling apply to these two games? Well BOTH are first and foremost SimTower ripoffs. And that just asumes that SimTower was not based on something else.

Every idea is based on another idea. Where do you stop with copyright infringement when somebody copies an idea? Where would/. be if the idea of a forum was granted copyright?

Tiny Tower, while inspired by SimTower, definitely expands upon SimTower by adding in people management. SimTower was strictly a tower building sim. If Dream Height is identical to Tiny Tower in features and UI with the only difference being a difference in graphics this would be very much like the photo case from earlier. The question is whether the different graphics is sufficient enough to make it a true derivative work rather than creating a clone of the original work or basically does it satisfy the or

There's nothing suspicious. Zynga is fairly straightforward about what they do: take existing popular games and clone them. Zynga has the R&D muscle to polish up the graphics and get them out the door in a fairly expeditious fashion. Now, at times, they will simply buy out these games. They tried to buy Tiny Tower before cloning it. Frankly, there's no shortage of earlier games that Tiny Tower is imitating either. All this is right now, is free publicity for both Tiny Tower and Dream Heights. As

Every platform game was copying from Mario and the other pioneers. Asteroids copied SpaceWar. RTS games copied Dune.

Hell, I remember when FPS games were called doom-clones. And they *really* were. There's no denying doom's influence. Some games paid money to licence the engine from Id, but many others merely built their own versions.

Did that mean Id should have a right to sue every video game company? No. And did they try? NO. Id was totally cool with it. They were just glad to have been so successful

I thought it was well understood that this was Zynga's business model:

(1) look for and coming mobile games(2) quickly copy found game and throw a big stack of servers at the back end so that its online play will scale(3) profit!

Oh yeah, and there was something in there about flogging your workers in a very typical game industry sweat shop. All the stories I've heard coming out of Zynga was that it truly is crunch mode 100% of the time there.

Zynga has a well storied and much written history of taking other people's games, cloning them and then making a bundle of cash. Basically every *ville game they make is a virtual ripoff of someone else's initial idea.

This does not surprise me, not one bit.

Somewhere, a lawyer is filling his fountain pen and getting a hungry gleam in his eye... a hunger for suing that is...

In general a small development house cannot successfully sue a multi million dollar company, whether the case is valid or not is irrelevant as multi-million dollar lawyers will pretty much tweak any law to permit just about anything.

They aren't worried about Mobage because that game IS Tiny Tower. As it says on the web page
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobage.ww.a560.tinytower_android [android.com] "The #1 iPhone Game Tiny Tower comes to Android for the 1st Time" so there must be some sort of licensing between the two companies. Zynga could have taken that approach after the company decided not to be purchased but instead of working out some sort of licensing that would have benefited both companies they decided it would be cheaper to

well, I think what he should have done would have been to sell out to zynga. better analogy would be a guy coming to you with a pile of money and saying take this bribe and don't go to work - then when you refuse they start selling copycat products that put the factory you were working at out of business.

and then make a better clone of tiny tower. he didn't sell out probably because he thought tiny tower will keep making him more money for a long time, except that there's no reason why it really would go li